Amanda Fischer, CD LMT CYT

Mothering the Mother, Mothering Myself.....

My first steps on the path to becoming a Doula began before I knew there was even a path to walk on. At 17 I found myself the sole support for another teen friend who was birthing  her first child. Alone and scared in the hospital, she asked me to be present and I made myself available having no idea what I was jumping into. With no prior knowledge of birth I had nothing to offer but the deep love and respect we shared as friends and no other tools but my eyes, my words, my hands, and my breath.  What we shared that day was a discovery of our strength as young women. It left such an impression on me about becoming a woman through the journey of motherhood. I left the hospital knowing that I would do many things in my life like have a career, travel, fall in love, make money… but they would all be secondary to my identifying role of being a mother.

Three years later when it was my life and my body going to the transformation of carrying a child, that hospital experience shaped my decision-making process. After having seen my friend's birth interrupted by medical interventions I decided that there was no reason for me to go to the hospital. My mother always told me a beautiful story of my own natural birth. She described that there was joy in the pain and that she felt overwhelming love and power as I made my passage into the world. That story affirmed for me that as a young woman, my body was created to birth a child. I therefore chose to birth my baby at home with a midwife and my birthing experience was a defining moment in my life. I was so inspired by the empowerment that I experienced in the connectedness that I created with my child as we labored together that after he was born I became such a vocal advocate for natural childbirth before even understanding that there was an advocacy movement. Little by little friends and family would ask me to talk to their pregnant cousin or their wife or their sister or friend and I was invited to attend births of women needing some support. I continued informally like this for years before even learning the word doula. After welcoming my second child at home my life's work began to expand more in the direction of other healing arts as a bodyworker and a yoga teacher and I began to approach birth with the tools of my growing skill set.

Attending a Doula certification program so many years after attending my first birth formalized my role as an advocate and a mentor for pregnant and birthing women, and enhanced some of the fine tuning of my practice, but my eyes, words, hands and breath are still the gifts I offer  families as they welcome their own little ones.

I am honored to be invited to support families during pregnancy, offering education and support and am open to attend each and every birth in whatever setting the family feels is best for them.  I relive the joy and power my mother experienced with my birth, and as I did with the births of my two children. It is my passion to protect the sacred passage of mother and child and to encourage that the first experience they share together is shared in connectedness.

The definition of Doula is one who "mothers the mother". In sharing a piece of all the love and compassion I have been blessed to receive in my life by "mothering" birthing women I am in turn nurtured to grow as a mother to my own children as a daughter to my own amazing mother and as a sister to all I share this life with. I too feel "mothered" by each step on this path that I now know so well.